I Belong With You, You Belong With Me
by David N. Brown
Summary: Pat must use the secrets of time-travel to reunite with Tiffany and save himself! A science-fictional "song-inspired" fic.
1. The Perfect Day

**Here's an "oddball" piece I have been thinking over, and decided to write out this weekend. It's a "song fic" for "Ho Hey" by the Illumineers, used in the SLP TV spots and DVD. (Unfortunately, I have just been told I need to cut the lyrics themselves, but they are readily available online.) This also turned into an outright homage to my All-Time Favorite Author, Fritz Leiber. I would encourage anyone to look up his work, with the caveat that you might run across a spoiler or two for this story.**

My name is Pat Peoples. About three years ago I got out of a mental hospital. I started trying to find a way to get back together with my ex-wife, but along the way, I met a widow named Tiffany and I married her. She is wonderful and beautiful and smart and she understood me better than anybody. So, of course, I lost her. She's run away from me, and I know she's never coming back.

Oh, yeah, and I'm pretty sure I'm dying.

So how did this happen? Well, maybe it doesn't have to. I've been reading a lot of books since I got out. One of them is _Space Time For Springers: A Theory of Time Travel_ by Professor S.K. Gummitch and Cecelia Starling. Don't worry about trying to find Professor Gummitch; the foreword by Ms. Starling says that it was written from the professor's notes after his death, and his identity was kept hidden even then. The book says it's possible to travel through time, not with any kind of machine, but with your mind. And if you try really hard, you might be able to change the past. I read it a lot, just in case I might need to try, and now's the only chance I'm going to get. I'm taking my chance, and I know just where to start...

"What kind of popsicle do you want, Tiffany?" I ask. "They have strawberry or lime."

"I don't know," she says. "You pick."

"Okay," I say. I look to the guy pushing the ice cream cart. "I'll have..."

Then I, the future me visiting in my head, step in. It's hard, and I get a feeling like a thundering headache, but I do it. "Lime."

I remember every detail of that day. The lime tastes better than the strawberry did. But everything else is the same. We sit in our favorite spot in the park where we run, under a nice, shady tree at the top of a hill that looks out over the lake. I lick my popsicle to savor it, and Tiffany takes bites. I look at her. She's a little older than me, but still looking very good, and kind of exotic. Sometimes, I tease her that she looks like a Siamese cat, and to me she really does a little: Her complexion is just a little dark, which shows more since she started going lighter on the makeup, and her eyes are big and kind of broad. The funny thing is that her parents and her sister all look like the perfect WASPs, and there are times, like now, when I wonder where down the family tree Tiffany got her looks from. But I would never ask, and I don't really care, except that she's beautiful. She says, "Stop staring at me," but smiles.

When we're done, I get up, and we walk down to a bridge over the lake. It's the place where I waited for her a few months ago. It was winter then, and we hadn't seen each other in a while, because we sort of broke up. Tiffany had told me she was in love with me before I even admitted to myself we were together, and I got upset and I got myself hurt.

I guess history repeats itself. I just hope, if I can't undo what's going to happen, that this time they don't blame Tiffany.

So, we're on the same bridge where we got back together, and instead of ice and snow, there's ducks and turtles and flowers, and Tiffany knows what's coming. I hardly know what to do, and watching as future me I can see ways I screwed up that I don't even remember. I'm almost ready to do that push again, but I stop myself, because I know I can only do this so many times, and I know what's going to happen. Unless I changed things... But no. Of course it happens the same way it did. I get down on one knee, and get out the ring, and as badly as I screw it up, she still says yes. Of course she says yes, she was always going to say yes. I could have slipped and fallen in the lake and lost the ring, and she still would have said yes. Never mind temporal inertia, that's true love.

When it's done, she jumps on my back, and I run carrying her. Then I say, so she knows I'm joking, "Tiff, should we tell Nikki?"

"Fuck Nikki!" she shouts, and watching it over again, I wonder if she really knew it was a joke. "She's what's behind you! Stop looking back, Pat! Look at what's ahead of you!" She leaned forward into my field of view, laughing. Then she waves a hand, at the lake, the park, the city, the whole horizon. "There's a whole world out there! We can do whatever we want! We can have a big wedding, a small wedding, a shotgun wedding! We can get our own house, apartment, trailer home, a cardboard box! We can have a kid, a dog, a cat, a parrot, a ferret, a ten-foot python! The one thing you can't do is go back, and why would you want to? We've got each other, here and now and for whatever's ahead! Isn't that good enough?"

I agree, and so does future me. It was more than good enough, it was perfect. This was the Most Happiest Day of my life, my one PERFECT day. But I couldn't see how good it was, and I blew it, and that's why I'm back here.

The book says there's three limitations on trying to change the past. First, you can only time travel in what the book calls your own lifeline, to the events you lived through, so anything like killing Hitler is right out. Second, you can't go to the same time twice, or go back before a time you've already been to, so if you're going to try anything, it's one shot. Third, the only way you can change the past is to make you back then do something different, and that's really hard, hard enough to destroy you. Professor Gummitch believed it was only safe to try it three times, five tops.

Now, you must wondering, why did I use one of my chances just to come back here, to the Happiest day, the PERFECT day, just to ask for a different kind of popsicle? Well, I need to try this out, to find out if I can do it, and it's better to make the first try when I'm sure I can't make it any worse, because Tiffany loved me then. And I won't deny that of course it feels good to live it over again. It also reminds me what the stakes are.

If I can find a way to change what happens between this day and where I started, I can be happy with Tiffany for the rest of my life.

If I don't, I'm either going to drown or bleed to death under the footbridge where I proposed to her.


	2. Under The Bridge

For a moment, I have no consciousness but a whirl of sensations, of wet, and cold, and pain, and for some reason something warm and furry on my face. The last sensation brings me back to myself, returning future-me to the now-me that I started from.

It is raining, hard. I am sprawled on the bank of the pond, right beside the bridge where I slipped and fell right through the rail. The rail is still underneath me, stabbing into my hip. The water is normally about three feet deep, but with the rain, it's at four feet and still rising, lapping at my cheeks. My head is hurting, my leg hurts worse, and a reddish-orange kitten is batting at my face. "Catness," I say, and raise my head.

Catness Everready is a kitten I brought home from an animal shelter the week Tiffany and I moved into our appartment, right next to this park. Tiffany and I both love her, and I swear, if a cat can love anybody, that cat loves us back. Catness is almost grown now, but the way she acts and even looks is still kittenish. She isn't the kind of cat who shreds your nicest clothes or leaves hairballs in your shoes, but she loves to get everywhere and into everything, and she can't wait to play. As often as not, the first thing I wake up to is Catness on my face trying to get me up. The funny thing was, Catness did the same thing with Tiffany, and she would sleep right through it. So I'm not surprised to wake up to Catness now, even if it is raining.

"Thanks for coming, Catness," I said. "I wish I could get up and play, but, well, I can't get up. I'm sorry Tiffany isn't here, either, but I drove her away again, and this time, she isn't coming back. You know, the way you get into things, Tiffany swears you must know shortcuts in space-time, and now, I think you just might, because I just found one. It's only in my own head, but I can go back in time and if I give a hard push, I can change what I do. If I can find the right time, and make old me do the right thing, then maybe I won't be stuck here, and we won't be alone, and I won't die. So don't worry if I seem out of it for a minute. I'm just back in time, and I won't be long, because time's relative."

Now it's our wedding night, and the first night we make love to each other, and our first BIG fight. The wedding was wonderful, just a small, short ceremony. Our families throw the big bash at our "reception" later. And the love-making, already, it's fantastic. I come in right after.

We're in the tub, sipping champagne, ad she's turned around so I'm holding her legs in my arms. I love it. I love her. I'm about to say, "Your legs are better than Nikki's."

The effort's like passing a bowling ball, but I- that is, future me- manage to make my past self say instead, "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever been with."

She straightens up. I can tell she isn't happy, but at least she doesn't scream. Yet. "You mean," she says, "I look better than Nikki."

"Well... Yeah. For example. But that's a compliment, isn't it?" It's now-me saying this, without my help. I don't know if I can do anything more. But this is already sounding like it did the first time around, and I should do something.

Tiffany's saying something I remember, except she isn't screaming or hitting me. "No, it's not a compliment, Pat. It's not okay to compare me to Nikki, or any woman you've been with, even if it's in my favor. Can you understand why, Pat? It's because what you're telling me is that you still think about Nikki, even when you're with me, and that means I'm still competing with her. It was hard enough for me to deal with that the first time around."

Now I try to get through to now-me again. It's not easy, but it's nothing like what it was to change what I said. It looks like, once I make the first change, I can follow without using any more of my chances. "All right, Tiffany. I understand. I do. Sometimes I feel insecure about you comparing me to Tommy..."

She doesn't scream. This is much worse. "You're bringing Tommy into this?" she says, and it's like a hiss. "You dare bring up Tommy's name? You cowardly, hypocritical sonnuvabitch-" That's when she throws the champagne bottle, and things end the same way they did the first time I lived through this: I get hit right in the face, the bubble bath turns red, Tiffany screams and jumps up and falls over the side of the tub and hurts herself. So we're both crying and bleeding, and then there's a cop banging on the hotel room door.

I move forward, and make a stop just to see if things are different. We're living at the place Tiffany built behind her parents' place, in a little apartment crowded in above her dance studio, and doing our best to be happy. Just now, it's 2 AM, and Tiffany's asleep, holding me really tight with her face buried in my chest, and I'm still reading a book. It's a collection of stories by Ambrose Bierce. I set down the book, frown, and shake Tiffany awake. She comes up slow, and definitely not happy. "This had better be worth my while," she said.

"Tiffany, look at this," I said. The book's open to a story titled "Some Haunted Houses", which is really several little stories strung together, and I point to the heading of one, "A Fruitless Assignment". She takes the book, and as she reads, she gets a little more alert, and when she's done she gets a funny look.

"What the fuck," she says, and throws the book away.

"Exactly!" I say. "It's one thing to have a story without a happy ending, but this is hardly even a story. There's just a guy we don't really get to know anything about, no real story, just the creepy house, and the completely freaky scene, and then at the end you don't even know if he knows whathefuck happened!"

"No, Pat," Tiffany said, "I mean, whathefuck- you thought it was worth waking me up at 2 AM to show me this?" She buries her face in a pillow, and then pulls the pillow over her head. "God... I really thought it was losing Nikki that made you crazy. I thought if you were over her and together with me, you would get better, or at least do better. But now I'm figuring it out. You were always crazy, you're always going to be crazy, you're like this big blob of crazy waiting to engulf anybody who tries to help you. Nikki just had the good sense to get away from you..."

She starts to sob, and I'm sad, but I'm still hurt and angry over what she said, and as future-me in my own head, I'm hurt and angry all over again. I don't try to stop myself from shouting, "Don't call me crazy! You call me crazy, you're judging me, and you're a hypocrite. I've got my problems, I never denied it, but I'm not the one who threw a bottle and-" I go then, I flee. I don't have a perfect memory, even if people do say I'm pathologically anal retentive, but I'm sure that everything is happening exactly the same. Nothing is changed.

I said there were limitations in trying to change the past. But all of them put together are nothing compared to the problem of actually succeeding. Even if you do everything right and give your past self a push at just the right time, you're going to run into what Professor Gummitch calls historical reluctance. Basically, it's like you're an actor in a movie where the director lets you do some improv, but will step in if you try to go completely offscript. Like, suppose you could go back to a cafe in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. A car pulls up, and a scrawny guy who's really just a kid steps forward with a gun. Then suppose you draw a gun to shoot the kid. The gun jams, and he shoots the man and the woman in the back of the car. Or you try to wrestle the gun away. The gun goes off, and the people in the car get hit just the same. Or maybe you tackle the kid. The gun falls from his hand, and some other nobody picks it up and shoots. Or, if everything goes right and the people in the car just ride away, powerful fools will still look for an excuse to fight, and it may even be the living Archduke Ferdinand rather than the dead one who starts the First World War.

That's what I'm up against. I have to think it's God's way of keeping us from messing with things, and I wonder if that means it's wrong to try. But then I have to think, if it was always wrong to do it, why would God make a universe where we can do it at all?


	3. Stuck

**I was debating whether to wait to post this chapter, and I decided it could be a good chance to settle what to do with the "song fic" angle on this story. Even before I was advised not to incorporate actual lyrics, I felt like that aspect of my complete draft was a bit awkward: The story is fairly long and having excerpts from the song at regular intervals entailed, among other things, using more of it than ****_I_**** necessarily wanted to use. What I definitely wanted to use all along was a few lines that gave me this idea in the first place, which I think is short enough to use as a "quote". I have therefore added a little bit to this chapter that I think will accomplish what I want to do without raising any legal issues.**

I come back to find Catness Everready's paw poking my nose. Water is lapping at my chin. I try to shift to move myself up the bank of the pond, but I feel that piece of broken railing in my leg. If I move, it will tear up my leg even worse. It's hurting bad as it is, and I try singing to myself, a song my parents played at the reception for Tiffany and me. I tell Tiffany it's our song, even if it's a bit random and silly and she says I don't get the words right. Then there's one verse that sticks in my head, the one that made me think maybe I was meant to learn to travel through time. That's what I sing now, and if the words aren't right, they're right for me: "Jus' think what migha been'f... I'd took the bus t' Chinatown... I could be standin' at Canal... an' Bow'ry... You'd be standin' next to me."

My head starts to sag, I'm starting to lose consciousness, which won't do at all. I look at Catness, and remember how I got her. She was my present to Tiffany after our worst fight ever. When I brought Catness home, she looked like a bag of skin and bones. In a month, the vet was telling us she was almost overweight, which didn't stop her from zipping around like a little fireball. Tiffany loved the little furball from the start, and it was watching them together that got me started teasing Tiffany about looking like a cat. For a long time, I was grateful for the fight. But now, when I think what the fight was about... I think maybe that was how this started.

I look at Catness. "You would die for Tiffany, wouldn't you?" I ask. "I know a cat isn't supposed to die for anybody, but I think you would for her. I know I would. But I'm afraid it may take more than that. I may have to change things so you're never be with me or Tiffany, and that might mean you don't live past the time when you're a little bitty kitten. You'd practically never be born. But if I thought Tiffany would be better off if I changed things so I was never born, I'd do it, so I'm not asking for anything I wouldn't do myself. It probably won't work, because it turns out history's like a stubborn jackass, and even if it does, I think there's a good chance we'll be together, because I think maybe you were meant to be with Tiffany and me as much as I was meant to be with Tiffany. But if not... Would you want it do happen?" Catness presses her paw gently into my nose, and I nod and sigh as I go back.

I come into my head right as it starts. We're in a proper apartment now, paid for with my job at the grocery store and dance lessons Tiffany teaches in the studio at our old place. Moving into the apartment got us talking about a house, and then...

"But I gave you time to think about it," I say. "I took the time to think about it too. We both had enough time, and now it's time to talk. Do you want kids?"

"No," she says.

I hoped to arrive a little sooner, so it takes me extra time to get my bearings, and then Tiffany's voice hits me, and it hurts future me even more than now-me. I'm too off-balance to stop now-me from saying, "Why not? You like kids. You love Emily. You're old enough that we need to start soon if we're going to do anything. They day we got engaged, you said we could have a kid, and I know you were kidding around, but you didn't sound unhappy about it! Why are you saying no now?"

Her back is turned, but now she whirls around and says what comes up from her mind: "We already talked about this, Tommy- Oh, shit."

She stops, and we both stare, and it's just enough time for future me to step in. I stop myself from going off about how I never mix her up with Nikki, and instead I say, "You and Tommy fought about this. Right?" She just nods, and starts to cry. "I think I can tell you what happened. He wanted to try for a baby, and you didn't, or at least you weren't sure, and instead of talking about it, you started arguing about sex. I know. The same thing happened with me and Nikki. I'm sorry for mentioning her, but you need to know I understand. And I need you to know one more thing: Back then, I was the one who didn't want to. I changed my mind, and I have to believe you can too."

All of this is a lot harder for future me to do, and this time it's not getting much easier, maybe because I already pushed twice before. But I keep on, even though I can tell it is not going to work, not after she said Tommy's name and probably not even if she hadn't. She's on her knees, sobbing, and probably not even registering what I'm saying, and even if she is, she won't remember it, unless it is in little bits that mix together with things we will say to each other later. Now-me is as far gone as she is, which is probably the only reason I have been able to do as much as I have. But the harder I try to control the now-me, the less I am able even to separate how I think and feel as future-me from my past self. I fear that I, the future-me, am about to perish.

Professor Gummitch's book reports first-hand the fate of practicing time-travelers who push their talents too far. While the mind is displaced in time, the body falls into a trance, usually just for a few minutes even if he reports being in the past for hours or days. Only sometimes, a traveler never comes out. Gummitch and his colleagues unanimously agreed that this is because the traveler was literally lost in time. They held out many theories of their fate, from simple annihilation to wandering in time and space and even possessing other bodies, but Gummitch favored the theory that travelers, especially those who attempt to change the past, sometimes merge with their past selves. Gummitch further opined that innumerable tales of premonition, possession, multiple personalities and unexplained vegetative states were in fact nothing more or less than evidence of travelers who lost themselves in time.

After struggling to control my now-self, I have to struggle even harder to be free before I am consumed. The best I can do is to rmemember what I did, and consent as now-me does it. Tiffany comes up and starts breaking things. Now-me and I are on our hands and knees, and together, we crawl toward Tiffany. At first, she is unaware of us, and then she looks and shrieks, and I give the push to lunge for her as she's reaching for a vase to bust over our head. This time, we tackle her before she gets to the vase, but I slam into the table as I'm tackling her to the floor and the vase falls and breaks right on my noggin just the same. Then we hold her tight as she screams and struggles and scratches. And finally, remembering my purpose, I pull myself from now-me and depart, retreating back to the time from whence I came.

The first thing I see is Catness's eyes, just staring into mine. I know I'm back, and I failed. But maybe that's not so bad.


	4. The Other Day

**I will give fair warning that my original plan was to rate this story "M" just for this chapter. I have expanded it a bit, mainly by adding a few ideas about the time travel that I had but didn't use when writing the first draft, and if anything it came out as a bit lighter in tone, but it's still DARK. **

Time travel feels a lot like just remembering things, and Professor Gummitch's book says that's because they're really the same thing. His book _Space-Time For Springers_ opens with a quote from a psychiatrist who said, "The mind is not the brain. The mind is the brain in time." That's pretty trippy in itself, but Professor Gummitch's proof takes it further. He shows that because the mind exists in four dimensions, it follows logically that we can extend our consciousness into time. It's like we've all got a wormhole in space-time, right there in our heads. Remembering things is being aware that we exist in time as well as space. When we remember things so clearly it seems more real than here and now, like when you start to pick out things you didn't pick out, it's because we're actually starting to go back in time.

For a moment, that happens to me. First, I'm holding Tiffany, while she's struggling to get away, and I think I'm slipping back to the fight I just left after I almost got stuck. But in this memory, I'm on this bridge, and it's raining, because I'm remembering what happened tonight, and I know I can't go back yet. Then I see papers: Divorce papers, unsigned. A restraining order that is signed, prohibiting me from seeing my own wife, and when I look it seems like Nikki's name should be on it, but it's Tiffany, because history loves repeating itself. And before that, a single note on a fat file, that's the most terrible of all...

Then I focus on Catness's eyes, here and now, and she looks like she does when she looks at her reflection in the mirror, and I remember one time... It was the morning of that day... Catness loves mirrors and a lot of the time, she just stares. So this morning, she lifts up her paw and presses it to the glass of the one on the open bathroom door, and it's like more than play to her. At first, I think of the story of Narcissus, but the more I watch, the more it seems like Catness is studying the mirror and the double on the other side. I swear, she looks like a scientist or a philosopher looking for the deepest secrets of the universe, and I can't help thinking that she just might be figuring them out. Then Tiffany comes out of the bathroom, with a towel around herself, kneels, and puts her own hand to that mirror. When I see the two of them that morning, the similarity really is downright eerie.

The picture's so clear in my mind, I think maybe I'm back in time again already, until here-and-now Catness nails me across the cheek. She doesn't scratch hard or often, but when she does, I know something's got her ticked off. I manage to pull myself up a little higher, though I can feel the rail digging into my leg. It gives me another half a foot, if I keep my head up. I lean my head against the side of the bridge, and look into Catness's wide eyes.

"I have to go back," I say. "Back to that day." Catness keeps looking, just like she understands, and then she climbs right onto my shoulder.

That day is our "semiversary", six months after our first anniversary. I want it to be a new perfect day, and it will be, until the end.  
Tiffany's been on some new meds for a while, and she's definitely doing better all in all, and lately, I feel like I've been seeing more of what I think of as the "sparkle moments" when I see her just blazing happy. Seeing her and Catness are looking at the mirror, I come up from behind, put my arm around Tiffany, and tell her my plan.

She asks me to make love to her then and there, and of course I do, while Catness wanders off on important cat business. Then we have breakfast, and then we go out. We walk in the park, and today, there's a cheesy little carnival there. Besides us, the youngest people there without kids in tow are a smattering of high schoolers. Quite a few people give us funny looks, and I'm pretty sure they would call security on me if I was alone. But nobody hassels us, and we chat with kids and adults, and now and then Tiffany lets Catness peek out of a canvas carryall bag, and she has that intent philosopher-scientist look.

I win handily at the carnival games, and when the kids ask how I did it, I show them how to do better. Soon, Tiffany's laden down with cheesy prizes When I win a purple hippo bigger than a lot of the kids, a nice guy at the stand agrees to hold it and our other prizes for us until the end of the eat all the junk food you only see at carnivals, cotton candy and snow cones and funnel cake and a plate of fried clams. We go on every ride that will hold an adult, though as often as not we have to convince someone that it will hold me. The parachute jump and tiltawhirl are truly thrilling, a ride called the "Octopus" is a lot of fun, and we have a cheerfully savage duel in the bumper cars. But what Tiffany likes best is the ferris wheel, and we ride it five times before the end of the day. The last time is at sunset, just before we gather our prizes and head for home. Tiffany lets Catness out of the bag, and all three of us look out at the city lights coming on.

I relive all this as future-me in now-me's head, and I enjoy it even as it breaks my heart. That hurt helps, because it keeps me seperate from now-me. More than that, it keeps me alert for the signs of what made things go wrong. We look at her a lot. Even as now-me is waddling home with arms full of prizes and the hippo slung over our back, the window of loving eyes stays on Tiffany. But there have been no signs, and when Tiffany looks at us with tears in her eyes, I cannot doubt that she means it when she says, "This has been the happiest day of my life."

It is pretty late, and now-me is ready to order delivery from a Chinese place, but Tiffany insists that I fix her a nice spaghetti dinner. Now-me's in a happy daze, listening to Tiffany's chatter like a happy song whose words aren't really supposed to mean anything. But I'm listening, and I catch it.

"Pat," she says, "have you ever been so happy it broke your heart, just because you knew you had to come down? I don't want to come down."

Even now-me notices, and he's about to say something I just now remember: "You don't have to come down."

I give my hardest, most desperate push yet, and now-me says instead, "Everybody has to come down. It's just the cost of going up. But no matter how high or how low you go, I'll still be with you."

When we're done eating, we make love, and I really think things have changed, until Tiffany leaves now-me to go to sleep while she takes a bath. It's all I can do to get me up when I hear the water stop running.

We call Tiffany's name as we approach the bathroom door, nicely. There's no answer. We knock, and call more urgently. Nothing. We knock the door halfway off its hinges. The tub is full, but Tiffany is nowhere to be seen.

This time, we find Tiffany on the couch in the living room. The prizes I won for her are piled around her and in her lap, and Catness is in her arms. Three half-empty pill bottles are on the coffee table. We grab for the phone, and I see her eyes open a little. We are here sooner, but still too late.

"Please don'," she says, and she actually smiles. "An' please... don' be mad. Don' bring me down."

"Why, Tiffany?" I shout. "I gave you the happiest day of your life, and you do this! Why?"

"'Cause Pat... I can't come down." Then her eyes close, and Catness curiously touches her nose.

The medics get there in time; I'm told it wasn't even a close thing. But I feel all over again their eyes on me, wondering what_ I_ did to make her do this. She goes away to the hospital, and soon enough she will be on her way to the other kind of hospital, with a note in front of her big fat file that might as well be a life sentence: _Dangerous to self and others._


	5. Apart Time

I come to at a scratch from Catness, and spit water out of my mouth. I jerk my head back, and stare mournfully into Catness's eyes. "It's no use," I say. "I couldn't stop her. I could never have stopped her. And it's not because of temporal inertia... It's because she really wanted to do it."

I replay the last four months in my mind. The amazing thing is that I hold it together as well and for as long as I do. The first day, everybody we know is either calling or dropping in, and it seems like everyone but me is crying. The funny thing is, they keep telling me Tiffany's going to be okay and they keep asking me if I'm okay, which I think is weird because I'm not in the hospital. Except Tiffany's sister Veronica; all Von does is put her arms around me and cry, while I'm trying to talk to her husband Ronnie who was my best friend before he was with her or I was with Tiffany, until right before they go, which is when she whispers, "It's not your fault."

I cry next day, all day, and Mom comes over, and my friend Danny asks if he can stay here, and I say it's okay. The third day is supposed to be therapy time with Dr. Patel, and he comes over. "Pat," he says first thing, "are you okay?" And I practically explode about everybody asking me if I'm okay when my wife is in the hospital. Then he says, "She is asking if you are okay."

Then I just gush, she's awake, she's talking, when can I visit, and Cliff says, "She is talking to her doctors. She has talked to me. The first thing she asked is if you are okay." Then he gives me a look, like I'm supposed to know he knows something I know, only I got no clue what I'm supposed to know. Then he seems to change subjects completely. "This apartment is very clean, also very safe. You appear to have child-proofed many of your cabinets. I also notice you have canvas bags for carrying groceries."

Then I tell him how we babysit Em sometimes, and we have the cat around, so we put locks on cabinets that have stuff that could hurt someone, and how the canvas bags mean less paper and plastic in the environment and around our house. He nods and says, "Plastic bags can also be hazardous, to animals and children." I nod, and say that yeah, one of the reasons we try to cut down on bags is to keep Em and Catness safe, and he says, "Yes, Em and Catness." Then, out of the blue, he says, "Has Tiffany talked to you about whether to take her pills?"

At first, I'm confused, and I say the first thing that comes to mind: "Well, we've talked about kids, we still talk. She says she doesn't think she wants that, and I tell her that's something I still want, and I hope she will at least think about it, but it's her decision and he don't want to put any pressure on her..." Cliff listens to me a bit and then says, no, the other pills, and I say, oh, the meds for her depression, and then he asks if there are any over-the-counter drugs in the house, and I say, "No, we both agree, we don't believe in that stuff. I mean, we'll take stuff if we really need it, like for her depression and my episodes, but just to treat a cold, which is really just suppressing the symptoms, or taking the edge off a headache, or just getting a good night's sleep, that's just trivializing medicine. Besides, we don't need any more stuff to worry about Em and Catness getting into." Then he repeats again, yes, Em and Catness. I think that's odd, but I don't think about it more because then he lays it out.

"It appears that Tiffany voluntarily discontinued her own medication," Cliff says. "She says she stopped within the last month, fully understanding the consequences for her mental health and accepting full responsibility for anything she might do in an unregulated state. By all indications, she went to great lengths to manage her symptoms, and the symptoms themselves were not all negative. While she does not share your diagnosis of bipolar disorder, she has a similar tendency to experience emotional highs between major depressive episodes. When she was in the `upward' phase of this cycle, it would have appeared that she was healthy and even improving. It is a mistake even clinicians make. I am sure you simply took it as a sign that your wife was happy and growing more satisfied with your marriage- and, at the time, she was. But inevitably, she faced the downward end of the cycle, and reached the limits of her endurance. There was nothing you could have done, Pat. It was not your fault. Nobody believes it is your fault, least of all Tiffany's own friends and family."

The first month goes by, and then six weeks, and somehow, I hold on. Mom visits a lot, and Danny moves in, and together, they keep the apartment in shape. They quietly put a lot of Tiffany's things away. I go to my shifts at work, and then I start dipping into leave time. I write a letter to Tiffany every day, though her doctors say she shouldn't have contact with me or anyone until the doctors agree she's stabilized. I don't try to deliver any of them, either, because I've learned to respect them. I just write down all the letters in one notebook, so I can give them all to her when she gets better. I love on Catness, too, and always mention her latest antics in my letters to Tiffany, and sometimes I sign Catness's name with mine at the end. And now that I think about it, it was during that time that Catness knocked a book off the shelf that I didn't even remember buying, though I'd noticed the odd title. It was _Space-Time For Springers_.

So, she's cleared to outpatient care, where patients can receive visitors. I go over to Mom and Dad's, with the notebook in hand and Catness in the bag, so Mom can drive me over to the hospital. When I get there, Mom and Dad are waiting in the kitchen. And Ronnie, and Tiffany's folks, and my therapist Dr. Patel, and Danny, and even old Dr. Timbers. The first thing I think is, _Oh shit._

It's Dr. Timbers who gives me the piece of paper. I hate him, and I'm sure he's doing this because he loves being the one to drop bad news on me. But, it occurs to me even then that he's also be doing this because he knows I can take it better from him than the people I love. I take one look and say, "Why are you giving me this? I haven't tried to contact Nikki in years. I hardly think about her anymore."

There's an old Indian story about a rattlesnake, caught out in the cold, who talks a woman into taking him into her tent (because in these stories animals can talk), and he promises not to bite her. So she takes him to her tent, and then he bites her. Then, as she's dying, she asks the snake why he broke his promise, and he basically says, "I'm a snake, what did you expect?" I always think of Dr. Timbers' voice as what the snake would sound like: So soft, and kind, and reasonable, and honest.

"Patrick, you know that this is not about Nikki," Dr. Timbers says in that snake voice. "You are familiar with what a restraining order means. For the foreseeable future, you are not to have contact with Tiffany and she is not to have contact with you."

"Are you saying she doesn't want to see me?" I challenge him.

"No one is saying that. The order applies to her as much as it does to you. It was granted at the request of both your families and the recommendations of myself, Tiffany's therapist, and Dr. Patel." I want to shout that it's a lie, but I look around and I know it isn't. "Patrick, you know that no court would grant such a request lightly, but only if there was a clear potential for harm to one or both parties."

Then I get out a good shout: "So you're saying I would hurt her?" But even as I say it, I think of the bottle, and the vase (which is fuzzy in my memory), and the time in Baltimore when I saw Big Jim, a hundred pounds soaking wet, send an attendant who used to be a linebacker to the other hospital. I don't need to look at anyone to know that's not true. "You think she would hurt me."

"There are many ways to be hurt, Pat," Dr. Patel says. Not all of them are physical."

Then I know... something. A piece falls into place in my mind, but it's like the rest of the puzzle falls apart, along with my mind. For six weeks, my memory is literally a blank, because any rational thought processes that would give my experiences meaning are gone. The most I will ever come up with is a sort of montage: Staring back at Catness's sad eyes. Staring at the wall while people- mostly Danny- try to talk to me. Their voices in my memory are no different than they were then, the squawking of the off-screen adults in the Charlie Brown TV shows. Staring at photos of me and Tiffany. Staring out the window at the park. Staring out at the park from the footbridge. And then for some reason there's one flash of getting on a Greyhound bus, and looking at a ticket that says New York, New York.

I snap back to here and now. I need to. I think I'm about to remember that last piece of the puzzle, and I can't afford to yet. It's already made me lose my mind, and I'm pretty sure it's got something to do with how I end up here, and there's no telling what it might do to me now. But there's something else I want to remember, and going back in time is the only way to do it. I look at Catness. "I have to go back," I say. "Not to change anything. To find out what happened." Then I'm back, standing in the doorway of a Greyhound bus, looking down at a ticket to New York City.


	6. Road Trip

**This chapter is my most direct homage to Fritz Leiber in this story. I will also refer readers to my Zombieland fan fic "Fear and Loafing in Las Vegas", specifically for a previous take on what I would call "non-verbal intelligence". I personally find this a fascinating subject, and I found this story especially rewarding as an opportunity to treat it with more nuance, but I still can't deal with the theme without thinking of the sheer malignity of Clan Tweedle.**

I will find out enough afterward to know that I only get away with this because everyone is waiting and watching for me to look for Tiffany. It still wouldn't have worked if the bus station didn't have automated kiosk tickets, so now-me has been able to buy tickets without having to talk or draw any extra attention. I have five other tickets for five different cities in my travel bag. Obviously, I have planned this very well, especially for someone in a complete psychotic break.

I start in the morning, and it's well into afternoon by the time I get to New York City. No one else takes a close look at me, or gets close to me either, and it's the same deal in the city. Say whatever else you will about New York hospitality, if you're quiet and smelly with a weird look in your eye, they'll go out of the way to leave you alone. I've been getting a sense of what now-me's mind is like: not really thinking in words, but just pictures and feelings. Then we walk into the subway station, he points and gestures anthropologist dealing with the natives, and they're more than happy to answer so we will go away.

We hop a few trains, and walk quite a ways. It's well after dark before we finally get to our destination. I read the sign on the door of the old brownstone building, and in an instant I realize what now-me has known all along. Then the door opens on the Joseph Starling Memorial Animal shelter, and I know without a doubt that the fifty-something woman who answers the door is Cecelia Starling, coauthor of _Space-Time For Springers_. "Hello," she says. "You must be a time traveler."

She leads us inside, and gives now-me something to drink. Around us are cages full of cats, many old, diseased or crippled, with at least a dozen running around. Now-me pets the cats and says, "Gummitch."

"I'm afraid Gummitch is long gone," Ms. Starling says. "If you read the book, you know that already. But I can introduce you to his great-grandson." She leads me through rows and rows of cages, and stops. From the cage, she removes an old and very fat tomcat.

"Even most `cat people' don't really understand cats," Ms. Starling says after we sit down on a convenient bench. "The most basic fact about them is that their mental life cycle is the reverse of ours. For us, the progression from infancy to adulthood is one of progress, from semi-sentient, self-centered dependency to a reasoning member of society. Of course, there's always room for debate how much progress most of us really make. For the cat, adulthood is a mental regression: A curious, gregarious kitten becomes a lazy, solitary adult cat. Such is the way of the average cat. But then there are Super Kittens.

"The Super Kitten is to the typical cat what the average human is to the average chimp: Similar in basic qualities, yet vastly superior in almost all of them. Of course, the chimps might dispute that. If it were possible to make quantitative comparisons to humans, I believe their intellect would be nothing more or less than that of a human genius. But the qualitative differences are undoubtedly too great for quantitative factors to have any meaning. They can grasp truths which would elude us, but surely there are many truths known to humans' satisfaction that would be just as elusive to them.

"Unfortunately, a Super Kitten is not unaffected by the regression of adulthood. But they remain a cut above their peers, and they retain the qualities of a kittem." As she spoke, she stroked the fur of Super Kitten Percy, who looked up at Pat with the lazy elelgance of a Sphinx.

Now-me leans down and gazes into eyes of the Super Cat. He yawns and blinks. "You might be thinking, I believe I can talk to cats," Cecelia continues. "Most people who know of me do, though I hope you are more perceptive. Of course, I know better than anyone that trying to communicate verbally with a cat is useless. That would be like ants trying to communicate with us using only their pheromones. Talking in our own speech can be useful for facilitating a mental connection. But based on my research, the only humans capable of truly and fully meaningful communication with a feline, even a Super Kitten, are those who would be classified as non-verbal psychotics. Like I was."

We look up at her, and she nods. "You have your own trouble, but rest assured, I was far worse. I did not speak until I was five. The only learning I manifested in that time was an exponentially increasing capacity for malice. My parents feared for our pets, my baby brother, and even their own safety. Then they brought home Gummitch the Super Kitten. I will never know what he did, or why, and I'm sure at the time I hated him for it. But he made a raport with me, and a time came when I began to act like a human being, and at the same time Gummitch became more like a cat. I suspect that it was the price he paid for helping me, and I am sure it was greater than I was ever worth. But as I grew up and he grew old, the raport stayed and even grew stronger, and after a while, I decided to do my best to write down what that strange old tom seemed to be trying to tell me." She sighs. "That cost a great deal in itself. My baby brother was the first to test Gummitch's theories. He was one of the ones who departed and did not return."

"You should return to where you came from. And don't worry about this self of yours. We will help him as best we can. I will let him stay the night, and I would guess that by morning, there will already be people coming to pick him up." The old cat stirs. "I believe Percy wishes to try an experiment. I think it can do no harm. You might be crazy enough to understand what he has to tell you, and if there is another you in there, you might be able to do something with it." She lifts up the old tom, and the cat stretches out a paw to our forehead like Michelangelo's picture of God reaching out to Adam, and in an instant I understand. And then I am pushed, hurled forward in time, and I know exactly when I am going.


	7. Visiting Time

I am drifting through time, at first, and I'm not sure how much is me traveling in time and how much is just remembering. The first thing I experience is the morning I snap out of it. I find Catness is on my face, putting her paw to my nose like she thinks maybe it's my reset button, and Danny's cleaning the apartment. He knows, and sits down. "Nothing's final, Pat," he tells me. "You're still married. The order's open for review at any time. And just between you and me- Tiffany's been asking to see you. You just gotta keep it together, Pat. And clean yourself up, too. You want to look good for your woman, right?"

I lost my job, but I get a new one stocking shelves in a pharmacy. It's just the right combination of physical labor and rote memorization for me to do it and blank out everything else. I visit Mom and Dad, and make phone calls to Tiffany's folks, who really are nice people to talk to, and I don't even ask that much about Tiffany. I do ask enough questions to find out that Tiffany's studio-apartment is now being rented out to a dance instructor. Once, her mother tells me, "She's not here, Pat." I also call Ronnie and Von's house, but I always get voice mail.

In a couple weeks, I get to see Tiffany. It's called a supervised visit. Tiffany comes with her attorney, who is her sister Von, and I come with Cliff. We have lunch at the diner where Tiffany and I had our first dates. I come with the notebook, which by now is ragged and overstuffed with loose-leaf paper. I insist on offering the notebook first thing, and Tiffany takes it, though Von clearly isn't happy about it. Tiffany puts the notebook in her own bag, straightens up, and just starts talking. She sounds like her sister Von does, talking about the most random things without regard for what, if anything, anyone else says. Mostly, she talks about reading books, and unlike Von, she does pause and listen when I talk. The one time she really responds is when I mention_ Space-Time For Springers_.

"Oh my god," she says, "I thought I gave that thing away. I got it from one of my roommates; she majored in science. I looked over it some, and she let me have it. She said it's about one-quarter occultism, one-quarter metaphysical philosophy, mostly self-contradictory, and one-quarter pseudoscience. Still, she said whoever put it together had to have known a lot about math and physics, and she said some of it showed real insight. I'm surprised you got through it"

"Well, it seemed to make sense," I say. "And it always condenses the complicated stuff into something simple. A lot of it's really just about positive thinking."

"Yeah, you're right, and boy, do you have that down."

It's two weeks before we meet again, and something happens in the meantime. I'm stocking the shelves, sorting out the long names, and I pause just a moment because I realize one sounds familiar. I realize it's the one Tiffany takes. I take a closer look at the label, and I'm kind of blank after that, until I get home.

The next visit is at the park. Danny comes with me, and Von brings Em, so Tiffany and I end up spending most of the time playing with her. We finally really talk a bit on that bridge, and I hold Em on my shoulders. At least, she talks. Now-me is having trouble really paying attention, because he keeps thinking about that label. "I read your letters, all of them," Tiffany said. "You know, you write like a middle schooler, and you couldn't cut a manuscript down to size if you had a chainsaw. I couldn't put that notebook down."

I let Em get down and climb up on the bridge railing, which is when Von insists we send Em back, because the railing could break under any kind of weight. Now-me says, "Tiffany... I love you... I always want to be with you..." Even now-me is kicking himself as we're saying it, but I don't try to stop us, because reliving it I know it was one thing that needed to be said. "I belong with you, you belong with me. You need me, I need you."

She looks at me, and tears start coming out of her eyes. In the corner of my eye, I see Von get off the bench, but Tiffany waves her back. "Pat, do you know what happened while you were, well, out? About a month ago, Von and Ronnie and a couple cops came to me, and they told me the whole deal with you not talking, and that you had slipped away from Danny and gone missing. That was the first I heard about it. They didn't quite come out and say it, but I could tell they thought you and I had both been planning to slip off and get back together. So, the cops made sure to keep eyes on me, and wherever you might look for me. After a couple days, they told me they'd found you, and after all they'd done to drag me into it, they couldn't get out of telling me where. It was New York City, Pat! You couldn't even talk, but you managed to get on a bus to New York City!"

She waves out over the lake. "That's why you're wrong, Pat. Remember what I told you right here, the day you proposed? I said we could do anything we chose, and what I really meant was, you can do anything you choose, and you can be anyone you choose to be. With or without me. I always believed that. I..." She looked me in the eyes, and then she screams, "And I was fucked up, all right?!"

Then she runs back to Von, and I don't get to tell her what I read on that label: "Do not take if you are pregnant or may become pregnant."

I'm afraid there won't be any more meetings after that, so I'm extatic when they ask me to meet Tiffany at her parents' house the very next week. Tiffany comes with her sister Von, who has a big suitcase full of legal papers. Tiffany sits down, perfectly straight, I can tell she's been practicing a lot: "Pat, you know I love you. I will always love you. I don't regret one day that we've been together. But it isn't going to work. It's not your fault, it's not really anybody's fault, it's just who we are. Please, Pat." Then she gets up and walks out, leaving Von to explain the papers.

Coasting through time in my own head, I let it all happen, because I know what's coming, and I hope, just by living through it I can be better prepared, because next week is today, and if I can't change something, it's the day I'm going to die in a duck pond.


	8. Today Is Today

It's today, one week after Tiffany gave me the divorce papers. Von's called a few times, asking me to bring the papers. I asked for another meeting with Tiffany, on the footbridge in the park, and I did say I would bring the papers. Von said she's against Tiffany seeing me, and I know she probably won't even tell Tiffany I asked for the meeting, but I can hope. I have to. Hoping is the one thing I'm good at.

I go to the footbridge, and wait. It starts raining. Danny comes and asks me to come inside, but I just stare. And then, just as the sun's setting, Tiffany comes, carrying Von's briefcase. It's already raining hard, and it's getting cool too. "Where's Von?" I call out to Tiffany.

"Fired! She told me not to come," she says. "She said you had papers."

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," I say. We draw together. Mine are blank, and already sodden. Hers are charred scraps in a sealed plastic bag. It's a small bag. Then she empties her bag into the pond, and I'm about to say that she shouldn't do that because the paper could be bad for the ducks and fish and things in the pond. Instead, I tear mine up and throw them in like so much confetti.

She laughs and kisses me. "I did sign mine," she says. "Von told me I needed to do it. She says I can't be good for you and you can't really be good for me because we need each other too much, and that's not how a healthy marriage is supposed to work... Yeah, like she's the expert." She makes a flatulent sound. "I did need to do it. I needed to see it in fine print to know, there's no Plan B for us. It doesn't matter if you're nitro and I'm glycerine. I belong with you, and you belong with me."

"Have you been taking your pills?" I ask cautiously.

"Of course! Like Von would let me skip," Tiffany says. "Now let's go back to the apartment, get out of these clothes and-" She kisses me hard, grinding her hip between my thighs.

"It's not that easy," I say. "Come here."

I climb up, and Tiffany follows, even as she protests, "Jesus Christ, get down, Pat! This thing isn't built to hold any kind of weight! It could break, and we'd fall in. Listen to that, it's creaking!"

"What do you care?" I shout. "You tried to leave me!"

She starts sobbing. "How long are you going to hold that over my head?" she screeches. She's angry, but at least she doesn't pretend I'm talking about the papers. "I told you I was fucked up! I was off my meds, high on sugar and great sex, and looking down both barrels of a depressive episode!"

We're both sobbing now, even as we shout. "You knew what you were doing!" I yell at her. I take hold of her, keeping her on the rail as she struggles to get down. "You knew what you're like without your meds! You knew what losing Nikki did to me! So what did you expect me to do when I woke up, after the happiest day of our lives, with the sun shining in, and the birds singing, and Catness jumping on me, and then I would have found you... gone... with half my pills there beside you? _What did you __**want **__me to do?_"

"I was off my meds! I was fucked up!" she protests. "I said I'm sorry!"

"I could have hated you, after I got over just being worried, if I hadn't kept asking- why half?" I shout. Now I am screaming, and I am shaking her. "You took half my pills- exactly half! You counted them out, and why? For a while, I really couldn't figure that out, and I think I lost my mind when I did. _The other half were for me!_"

"I didn't want you to do it!" she screams suddenly. "At least, I didn't want it to be like that! Look, if I had wanted you in on a Romeo and Juliet deal, don't you think I would have asked you to do it with me? I won't pretend I didn't think about it, and don't you pretend you might not have said yes! But then it wouldn't have been a real choice for either of us, just the same fucked-up codependency spiral dragging us straight down the drain. The only thing I could do that was fair to us was to do it alone and leave you to make your choice. I felt like I owed you that, because I had already taken too many choices from you. And _I was wrong_, Pat, and I could never do it again. Please Pat, let's get down."

"And what were my choices?" Then I know she knows I know. "There was one other thing that really bugged me more than anything: Why did you go off your pills in the first place, and why didn't you just go back on? Because you aren't supposed to take them if you could get pregnant!"

"What do you want me to say?" she screams. "I did it for us, and look what it cost! And what are our choices now? We both know what's going to happen, as long as we're together at all- you're not going to let _that_ go, and I can't trust myself to keep saying no to you until my clock hits the buzzer. This is what makes normal people crazy stupid!"

I pull he right against my shoulder, and almost whisper: "Well maybe, just maybe, you got it right the first time... Romeo and Juliet." She tries to pull away, and then I am screaming and shaking her louder and harder than before. "Am I scaring you now, Tiffany? Because this is how it felt, just to wake up and find you weren't there! _This is what you did to me, __you selfish stupid slut!_"

I let her go then, and she jumps down and almost slips. I reach for her again, just to steady her, and she screams and starts running. "Tiffany, wait!" I jump down to go after her, but I slip, and I have to grab the rail again to keep from falling, and she runs faster, and when I get my footing and start to lurch for the edge of the bridge, she goes faster still, right out of sight and still running. I sigh, and take one more step forward, and that's when I slip and take the hard fall, right through the railing.

I relive it all, pushed through time by a touch from that old tom, feeling all the pain even worse than before, and I can't change a thing. Not because of some power of the old tom, but because the me of just an hour in the future is completely one with the me who drove Tiffany forever and doomed myself to drown in a duck pond. And then I am back, and I feel a paw on my forehead and water splashing up my nose. I cannot raise my head any higher; the best I can do is lean back, and look up into Catness's eyes. "Love, we need it now," I sing to myself, while the water isn't quite in my mouth, "'cause lord, we're bleeding out..."


	9. Full Cycle

I look into Catness's eyes, and I understand at once that she is no Super Kitten. Yet, there is surely a spark of the Super Kitten there, just enough for me to think that this might actually work. I picture a message, not in words but in pictures and sensations, the way I did when my brain was completely off the rails. I add the picture of the old tom, the sensation of a push. In a moment, Catness is off, and of course I'm dead. Even the old TV hacks were never silly enough to dream of a _cat _bringing help.

The water's lapping under my nostrils again when I hear Tiffany's shriek. Then she's leaning down, leaning over me, and her lips breath air right into my nostrils. Then she looks over her shoulder and shouts, "Here he is! Now get your asses over here!" I hear Danny, and Jake, and Dad, and even Ronnie. Tiffany gives me air again, while Catness bats at my cheek.

Danny and Jake get down in the pond, chest deep, and manage to lift the railing stabbing my leg along with me while Ronnie grabs my shoulders. When they get me up on the bank, Tiffany leans down and whispers in my ear, "C'mon, Pat... did you ever think there was a way I wouldn't come back to you?"

In that moment, I understand why people would be allowed to travel back in time even when they can't change anything. It would make us see that there's some troubles we just can't avoid, and some things that are just meant to be, and just how good what we have really is. I put my arm aroung Tiffany.

"I told you that rail would break," she says.

"I think that bridge is a death trap," I say. I'm feeling loopy, and I know I'm about to pass out. "We should sue." The last things I feel is Catness's paw pressing on my nose.

Later, in the hospital, I'm talking to Dr. Patel and Danny and my Dad. "Nobody is considereing filing charges," Cliff says when I ask. "Your meeting was clearly by mutual consent, and the rest was clearly an accident."

Then I tell them about my imaginary voyage in time. "Seriously, I really thought that book had the secret of time travel," I say. "Then I found out it was written by a crazy lady who thought it was dictated by her cat. Well, in my dream, it was."

"I gotta say," Danny says, "I'd believe in psychic time travel sooner than I would've believe a cat would lead people to its owner in distress, and I saw that happen."

"Sometime, I oughta look up who Cecelia Starling really is," I muse.

Dad speaks up: "Ah... actually... that part was real. You did run off to New York, and they did finally track you down at an animal shelter, and the name of the owner was Cecelia Starling."

"Pat may have recovered some memories that were previously blocked," Dr. Patel says.

"Maybe we should call her up," I say.

"Too late for nothin' like that," Danny says. "A week later, she died in her shelter, and by the time they found her, the cats ate her. So, Pat... what did you try to change?"

I think about it, and decide to tell about the wedding night. I'm just starting when Tiffany walks in. "Hey, whoa, none of that's what happened at all! You know you never remember things right," she says. She looks to the family. "Look, here's what happened. Most of you know, we sort of got each other busted up, few stitches, nothing serious. But there wasn't any fight. It's just that we were in the tub, drinking champagne, and, well, you know about reflex actions..." Everyone laughs, and as I look at Tiffany, I can tell she really believes it.

Soon enough we're alone. "Dr. Lilly has agreed to change my medication," she says. "Something new that doesn't have the same side effects. It doesn't mean I'm ready- I'm not- and it doesn't mean I want to- I still have a hard enough time taking care of me. But it will give us our choices back."

"Tiffany," I say, taking her hand, "whatever happens, my choice is always you."

"Pat," she says after a while, "did you ever wonder, if I ever tried it." I look at her. "Time travel, I mean."

I shrug. "I suppose, if you had, you would have used up all your tries on saving Tommy."

"You're right, if I could have, I would have," she says. "Who knows? Maybe it would have happened at night instead of early afternoon. Maybe he would have stopped to help a guy with a flat instead of an old lady who's car broke down. Maybe he would have lived long enough for me to see him die. Maybe I would have figured out a lot faster that what happened came down to Tommy just being Tommy. And then maybe I would have decided, that maybe there was something better meant to be."

We're quiet a while, and then I tell her about my first trip, back to the perfect day. She stops me when I mention buying the popsicles. "There's something I think I should show you," she says.

She insists on going home and getting something I kind of knew about, her scrap book. She lays it in my lap, and I open it. The first page holds a photo and the business card of the diner where we went on our first "non-date". Then there's photos of our day at the beach with Ronnie, Von and Emily, and a pressed wild flower. Not much further in, there's a playbill from our dance recital, Christmas photos, and a letter from me asking to meet at the park. And there...

"Oh my god," I say with a smile. I hold it up. "This is from a bar I bought her the day I proposed. Right?" She smiles and nods, and then I take a look at the flavor.

It's lime.


End file.
